WASHINGTON – Democrats on Tuesday defeated an attempt by Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House’s top Republican, to denounce Representative Maxine Waters for suggesting that racial justice protesters should “become more confrontational” if the Derek Chauvin jury were not to convict guilty. to do.
In an episode designed by Republicans for maximum political advantage, the Democrats remained united in a vote of 216 to 210 to overturn Mr. McCarthy’s resolution to formally destroy Ms. Waters, a prominent black congressman who is often the target of insults by conservatives. to reprimand. The vote in the House took place hours before the jury found Mr. Chauvin, a white police officer, guilty of the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man.
Mr. McCarthy said that Ms. Waters, 82, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, had incited violence when she protested the death of Daunte Wright, a black man, this weekend in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. hands of a white policeman.
When asked on Saturday what protesters should do if no guilty verdict was handed down in Chauvin’s trial, Ms. Waters said, “We need to stay on the streets and get more active. We need to become more confrontational. We need to make sure they know we mean business. “
Ms. Waters, a 15-year-old Californian, later said she had referred to civil rights demonstrations that used civil disobedience tactics, and Democratic leaders supported her.
But Mr McCarthy – who this year refused to punish Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had previously agreed to kill speaker Nancy Pelosi – saw an opening to try and get politically vulnerable Democrats on the ground. He portrayed Ms. Waters’s comments as condoning violence and effectively challenged her colleagues to support her by putting the issue to the vote, a dangerous proposal given that the wafer-thin margin of control of the Democrats in Parliament left almost no room for dropouts.
Still, the Democrats held together. Ms. Pelosi, also from California, told reporters Monday that Ms. Waters had no reason to apologize for her comments, and she could be seen picking up votes in the House on Tuesday.
“I love my colleagues and they love me,” said Ms Waters after the vote. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt them or hurt their chances of re-election. I will make sure they are comfortable with my kind of advocacy so that we can all be sure we can do the right thing. “
After the measure’s defeat, Republicans wasted no time mounting the political attacks it should have fueled. Mr. McCarthy released a press release saying Democrats “had decided to be on the side of violence rather than the law.”
The House Republicans campaign weapon blew out press releases to the districts of threatened Democrats, claiming they had “voted for violence.”
In a tweet on TuesdayMr. McCarthy called Ms. Waters’s actions “beneath the dignity of this institution,” saying that “they increased the potential for violence, targeted lawlessness and may have hindered an equal branch of government.”
His resolution quoted lengthy comments from Judge Peter A. Cahill, who chaired Mr. Chauvin’s case, who said on an unusual side note on Monday that Ms. Waters’s comments may have opened up the defense to overturn the appeal process. Judge Cahill said he wished “elected officials would stop talking about this matter, especially in a way that does not respect the rule of law.”
Mr. McCarthy’s effort was especially notable after he refused to take any action against Mrs. Greene, who called the deadly uprising at the Capitol on January 6 a “moment of 1776”. Democrats denounced his move as hypocritical for not condemning the incendiary speech made by colleagues in his party around the time of the riot either.
“Clean up your mess, Kevin,” New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the No. 4 House Democrat, said at a pre-vote press conference on Tuesday. ‘Sit down. You have no credibility. “
The attempt to censor Ms. Waters rekindled tensions between Democrats and Republicans in Parliament, where many Democrats are still reluctant to cooperate with those who had expressed doubts about the legitimacy of President Biden’s victory or have their supporters encouraged to march to the Capitol. In the immediate aftermath of the congressional storm, some Democrats had urged to denounce or even expel Republican members who used bellicose language in the days leading up to the attack, but those efforts went nowhere.
Some Democrats who were unhappy with Ms. Waters’s comments feared that continuing to disapprove of her would unleash an endless stream of retaliation, a draft that Representative Steny H. votes.
“If confrontation is subject to sanctions, then we will have a lot of people on your side of the aisle who we think are confrontational every day,” he said, adding that the Democrats had not tabled a number of similar resolutions against Republicans. .
“However, this makes it more difficult not to go through with myriad resolutions on my side of the aisle,” Mr. Hoyer said.
The situation was reminiscent of the situation Mr McCarthy faced when the Democrats pressured him to punish Ms. Greene for her past comments. Democrats took unilateral action to strip her of her committee seats, citing the Republican leader’s reluctance to do so – an argument Mr McCarthy faked Monday.
“Speaker Pelosi ignores Waters’s behavior,” Mr. McCarthy wrote on Twitter Monday. “That’s why I’m introducing a resolution to denounce Rep. Waters for these dangerous remarks.”
The House rarely moves to disapprove of legislators. For example, Steve King, a former Republican congressman from Iowa, was never criticized for a litany of racist remarks he made during his tenure, including the claim that non-whites had not contributed as much as whites to civilization and that “ the mixing of cultures doing so will not lead to a higher quality of life, but a lower one. “
Charles B. Rangel, a former Democratic congressman from New York, was the last House lawmaker to be convicted in 2010 of a litany of financial corruption-related offenses.